Workforce planning starts with a simple question: what does Canada need from its health system, and what workforce will it take to deliver it?

The answer sounds straightforward. In practice, it’s anything but.

Across the country, health leaders are working to improve access to care while responding to growing workforce pressures. They’re making decisions about education, recruitment, retention, service delivery and new models of care. Yet too often, the information needed to fully understand those decisions sits in different places and different systems, making it difficult to see the whole picture.

That’s why efforts to improve how health information is shared and connected matter.

Seeing the whole picture

If passed and implemented, Bill S-5, the Connected Care for Canadians Act, would provide Canadians with secure access to their health information, support health care providers with timely access to relevant patient data, and establish requirements for health information technology vendors to ensure interoperability and prevent data blocking.

This represents an important step toward a more connected health system.

Over time, a more connected health information environment, supported by appropriate privacy, governance and access arrangements, could also help decision-makers better understand how the health system is functioning and where pressures are emerging.

It could contribute to a clearer picture of where people are accessing care, where service pressures and gaps exist, and how health needs are changing over time.

That matters because workforce planning is not simply about counting health workers. It’s about understanding how the size, distribution, skills, worker wellness, and ways of working align with the needs of patients, communities and the health system as a whole.

One of the most promising opportunities is the potential to better connect information about the workforce with information about health system needs and performance.

Today, those pieces are often examined separately. Over time, a more connected information environment could make it easier to explore questions such as:

• Where are people having the most difficulty accessing care, and what workforce or service factors are contributing?
• What workforce approaches are helping improve access to care?
• How are changing population and community needs affecting demand for health services and skills?
• Which investments are helping build a stronger health workforce and better patient outcomes?

The work to get there

The legislation itself will not answer those questions.  Nor does it directly address all the workforce information needed for planning. But it could help create an enabling environment in which health information can move more securely and consistently across systems.

Realizing that opportunity will require continued collaboration across jurisdictions, respect for privacy and Indigenous data sovereignty, and clear governance for how information is accessed and used.

It will also require a stronger and more integrated health workforce data foundation – something we’re making headway with through our Pan-Canadian Health Workforce Data Strategy.

That means more consistent and comparable information about who is working, where they are working, the skills they bring, how teams are organized and how the workforce connects to population and community needs.

Connected Care moves us in that direction.

We also know that data alone will not ensure Canada has the health workforce needed to support people today and into the future. Connected care depends on more than connected information systems. It also requires a connected workforce, supported by connected leadership, coordinated planning, and a common understanding of future needs.

Health Workforce Canada is helping to strengthen that connected leadership through several pan-Canadian collaborations. We are bringing together governments, health professions, employers, educators, and other partners to co-develop action plans for health workforce planning in rural and remote communities, while also strengthening the connections between education, workforce planning, and employment readiness.

These initiatives combine the data and workforce intelligence needed for informed decision-making with the collaboration required to turn insights into action.

By connecting data, people, and planning, we can build a stronger and more resilient health workforce system. In doing so, we can help create the workforce foundation that connected care depends on and ensure Canadians have access to the care they need, when and where they need it.